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The hackney coach driver in the joke was apparently attempting to cheat the magistrate since the legal fare in the 1700s was a shilling (12 pence) a mile and the distance from Westminster to Charing Cross is less than half a mile.
Source:
A Joe Miller joke illustrating the usage of "set down".
Joe Miller's Jests or, The Wits Vade-mecum, with a new introduction by Robert Hutchinson. New York, Dover Publications, 1963. Facsimile republication of the 1739 edition.